Bill Gentile's Essential Video Journalism Field Manual

Bill Gentile’s Essential Video Journalism Field Manual is a how-to guide for anyone aspiring to speak the visual language that increasingly dominates today’s global exchange of information. Founded on a 35-year-long journalism and teaching career that parallels and embodies the technological revolution that made video journalism possible, Gentile’s Field Manual is a must-read for beginners as well as veteran practitioners of the craft.

Follow him from the days of black-and-white film covering Nicaragua’s 1979 Sandinista Revolution to the era of high-definition, digital video cameras as he shoots and edits a documentary on U.S. Marines operating in Afghanistan’s Helmand River Valley. Gentile’s Field Manual teaches you to harness the power of technology and the Internet that dwarfs advances in global communication unleashed by the Gutenberg press.

You will learn how to:

• Articulate story ideas.

• Capture powerful images and clean sound.

• Recognize and cultivate dramatic story arcs.

• Conduct compelling, in-depth interviews.

• Write powerful treatments and scripts.

• Narrate stories.

• Edit for maximum impact.

Included in the manual:

• The ABCs of the Visual Language

• Proposal, Controlling Ideas and Title

• Clips to Story

• The Six-Shot System

• Rules on Shooting Video

• How to Use a Tripod

• Sound: the Heartbeat of Our Craft

• Dramatic Arc

• The Script, Writing to Pictures

• Sample Scripts

• Resources